


Leaves

by Sunquail



Category: Hatoful Kareshi | Hatoful Boyfriend
Genre: Angst, BBL spoilers, Canonical Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-21
Updated: 2014-11-21
Packaged: 2018-02-26 11:23:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2650256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sunquail/pseuds/Sunquail
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's no way to put yourself back together this time, is there?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Leaves

**Author's Note:**

> look who finally set up an ao3! I'm gonna post a bunch of old stuff all at once. I hope to heck I'm doing this right.
> 
> goddamn, I love making this bird sad.

there had to be a word, you think, for the buzzing numbness where your mind flips into instinctual autopilot - the most base survival instinct dredged up from the shards of your hopes - when you’ve lost everything, everything, and by all rights shouldn’t have any idea how to continue.

you didn’t remember getting home, putting the keys on the end table as usual, taking a few shaky steps into the room, everything how you’d left it, and trying to control your collapse to the floor as a haphazardous flopping sit. you remained, trembling, staring dully at nothing into the grey corners where the dim twilight outside hadn’t reached, cast into shadow. you couldn’t think. you couldn’t. couldn’t move anymore. your wing still stung from where you scalded it. you should run it under cold water. you should get up. you should lay down. you should eat something and never eat again and maybe fall asleep or something, anything to work out this feeling. this void - it wasn’t a feeling at all.

your wing stung. you should run it under cold water.

you were stuck. that’s what it felt like. stuck in an instant of being where you felt incomprehensibly lost and. stuck. lagging. was everything faster? was everything greyer? was it all slower and you were just realising how

empty

everything was.

and you’d grown used to the silence. you’d listen to the radio sometimes to keep a phantom illusion of company. it wasn’t even much past silence when you hadn’t had company. soft footsteps on a good day. the turning of pages. coughs, cries, laboured breaths on the worst days. your own breath hitched for a moment, and you blinked, glancing away from the corner. it seemed like it was staring back. you were shaking.

your wing stung. you should run it under cold water.

that’s what he would have told you

you should run it under cold water.

you should take better care of yourself. your eyes were tired and you knew they could see it. when you gave up preening in the morning to fit more work in, and your hair feathers hair was ruffled, when you would hardly leave his side, you should take better care of yourself. how could you? 

how COULD you, Hitori?

inhale. hitch.

you moved your hands to your head, eyes, rubbed. they stung too. it seemed like an age since you’d choked on the smoke - your throat was raw and you doubted you could speak again yet. you swallowed. thick and nothingy and scratchy. you felt heavy and hollow all at once, as if that could happen. you didn’t think you could get up. from your peripherals you could see his usual seat on the settee and you stared, transfixed. you sensed - you didn’t move, but you sensed - behind you, the bookshelf. sparse. many things you hadn’t read. many things he hadn’t read. the room was grey. you sensed him slowly replacing a book on the shelf. slowly, eyes downcast and fingers thin, shaking, like twigs and feathers that your mind painted as so brittle they could crumble away any second like dead leaves, like d

dead

dead leaves

dead.

you should run it under cold water.

he inclined his head so slightly towards you and you flinched, curled in on yourself, whimpered through your chapped lips, you failed, you failed and he would never stand at that shelf again. there were no sunsets and it wasn’t even night you could find solace in, point out the stars and the colour, he told you, the colour in stars, the colour in the night sky, there was

you should run it und

under run it cold water you should 

run you should run

you should run.

but you curled up. and you shook. and you couldn’t move because he was everywhere but nowhere and how could. it didn’t make sense. didn’t make sense and you were so scared you couldn’t stay here and you couldn’t move and you ached and you ached and you didn’t cry, you didn’t cry again, you threw up again, you shook and and. dead leaves. you should run.

you

you slowly stood up. you wobbled, and your mind buzzed, and you autopilot-moved to the sink. your wing stung, and you turned on the cold water.


End file.
